The first episode of the fourth series of thriller Strike Back: Shadow Warfare
was moronic and borderline offensive, says Mark Monahan

Sky1’s Strike Back: Shadow Warfare was pure baloney. Series four kicked off with the tale of a plan to raid a drug dealer's Columbian hideout, and featured (among other things) a bullet in the head, bared breasts, a throat-slitting, more breasts, a fair bit of swearing, even more breasts (in flashback! Pure art-house), and enough discharge of military ordnance to win or else start a third World War.

It’s all quite moronic, borderline offensive, and yet not quite as un-diverting as it should be. Whether or not Robson Green is entirely credible as a former crack soldier must remain open to question, and Martin Clunes as a sort of latter-day Scarlet Pimpernel was a definite case of sack-the-casting-agent. But there’s agreeably gung-ho meat-headedness to the sparring between Philip Winchester – US-born but Lamda-trained, hence perhaps his very credible English accent – and Sullivan Stapleton; and the programme’s makers don’t sit around, or skimp on the explosives.

It is too, at the very least, entirely equal opportunities when it comes to physical fearsomeness. Last night, there was no shortage of nice girls biffing and machine-gunning nasty guys, while Sgt Julia Richmond – a laboriously well-spoken Michelle Lukes – reduced a posse of home-invading baddies to constituent body-parts while barely putting down her bottle of shower gel. It’s a skill they surely ought to teach at finishing-schools everywhere.